A Retired Couple's Investment Account Suddenly Showed Zeros. Then They Learned the State Had Taken It: "It's Just Pure Theft"
Eugene and Ann Breznock had not moved. They had lived in the same house in Winters, California, for more than 30 years. Then the retired couple opened a Charles Schwab statement and found that investments worth $275,000 were gone, replaced with a column of zeros. That is how CBS13 Sacramento’s Call Kurtis team described the discovery in a May 2021 report . “It’s just pure theft!” Eugene told the station. According to CBS13, the couple had not touched the account for three years or had any contact with Schwab. Under California law, that was enough for the state to require Schwab to transfer the investments to the state’s Unclaimed Property program for safekeeping. Getting it back proved harder. CBS13 reported that the assets were labeled “incomplete” on the state’s website, that the state blamed Schwab for submitting the transfer with “errors,” and that when Eugene called Schwab, he says he was directed back to the state. “I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve been awake thinking of what a rotten this system this was,” he told the station, adding that he worried about how long it would take to use his own funds again. Attorney William Palmer, who CBS13
